Monday, April 4, 2011

Pain Truth 4


"You can't compare with them, guys",

This is reply by our fearsome lady boss to our query. We knew her answer for doing unfair things as we have been serial abusive by company especially by herself. We keep quiet as much as possible in order to avoid unwanted fines or suspension of our wages. We are not happy to work there but we can't go away. Our employer keep our passports and committed serial offense against us. Most of Myanmar workers are graduates and they are earning the lowest wages among the immigrant workers who came from variety of poor countries.

Since we, Burmese workers, are educated, we are able to adapt new environment's condition and easily take over a higher jobs. It proof that by seeing most of supervisor level workers from various sites are my fellow citizen. Moreover, only Myanmar workers are eligible to work at the head quarter together with locals. So why shouldn't I proud of them including myself? They know our strength well and they took fully advantage of us. There are so many Myanmar workers in that company. They even go Yangon themselves and hold interview to recruit new employment with the help of local agent. I was getting that job through this way.

Beside they know our situation, they also well understand the situation of our embassy. They know our embassy goes negligence once our citizen are being abused or unfairly treated by employer. At worst case, they even bribe to embassy official so that our counsel would go blind in favor of their way rather than to protect the benefit of its own fellow citizen. It's pretty hurt to stay under scrutiny of our own betrayal citizen. They offer few betrayal workers a slightly better package so that they can get insider news. We all hate such person for providing information to employer who give him a little more than peers. But nothing we can do but fulfill the 3 years contract.

Ok let's back main point, despite we take leading role, we are earning less than non-educated workers from other countries like Thai, Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, etc. Being foreign worker, we are daily wages earner and they are calculated by daily basic. Our worker can get RM-12 a day while other workers earn RM-15 a day while our workers are doing supervisory jobs. The story don't end here. They non-Myanmar workers deserve a wage raise every two years while we got a review on once three years. It's really happened to us. Again, our worker get RM-2 per raise while other enjoy RM-3 per time. Why do they treat us like that? It is the reason behind why we go up for group protest to our lady boss. We all realize that the fines and penalty would be imposed to us for this action.

But we took the risk of being fines and all negative consequence. We all wanted to go back at any given time if they don't like us. Unfortunately, they know our values in office and never want to release us before contract is end. Because they probably can't find the same quality with this bloody cheap wages. We all are engineers but earn general worker wages. What can we do? Our agent is nothing but take all our hard earn money. Our local agents are helpless and no powerful. They always think of employer's way as they want to keep a good relationship. They never think of their own citizen's plight. They are in fact cruel. There is no law in place to fix those unfair matters in the sake of our people. After understanding we get a raise for RM-2.00 rather than RM3.00 as other country men earn, we braved ourselves and went to the lady boss's room.

secretary : why are you all coming here during the working time? any appointment with madam?
we : we have something to discuss with madam.
secretary : by raising his eyebrow, why? tell me what's the matter first.
we : you can't do that, let us see madam
secretary : then I don't allow you go in
we : starting to show our temper to him so he understand we are desperate to go in
boss : after hearing some noise infront of her room, what's happening there?
secretary : here Myanmar guys come for complains
boss : who wants to complain, come
we : we all move forward together
boss : who is leader here?
we : we all see each other by not answer as we know leader is going to be given worst punished
boss : I asking you, who is leader?
we : all are the same, no particular leader here
boss : well, what's the case?
we : why we can't get RM3.00 raise like others do?
boss : because you are from Burma.
we : we all look at each other again silently.
boss : you all can't compete with them, their countries are better than yours.
we : we became damp....instantly
boss : go back WORK before I punish you all.....
we : but we are better contributing to the company, madam
boss : it really doesn't matter to us
we : then what matter to you, madam?
boss : the place of origin you come from.

We were so pain to be defeated like that. Why people are not judging us based on our own merit? There is nothing wrong with us for less developing/ poor at our home land. We tried our best and we earn the least. It is, in my opinion, totally unfair. I am sure there are a lot of similar stories like we faced there. I don't know whether our government the plight of us being immigrant workers. They are only interested in taking income tax. Please do help your country men from being bullied by others who is superior to them. At abroad, we have no where to rely but our own embassy. If our embassy neglect our troubles, then we are to accept all incoming abusive, bullies, unfair, etc. I hope our newest government can able to address those painful stories.


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